Kansas woman in custody after 3 children found ill

Kansas woman in custody after 3 children found ill

Feb. 20, 2018

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — An Olathe woman involved in a custody dispute with her ex-husband was jailed after she allegedly gave her three children a hazardous substance before taking it herself.

The woman, 37-year-old Therese Roever, was jailed Tuesday but had not been charged in what police labeled in a news release as an attempted murder case.

When officers went to the family's home Monday night, they found Roever and her three children needing medical attention, police said. Information she gave police indicated her children had taken a substance "meant to harm them." It was not immediately clear what substance they were given.

The children, girl and boy twins born in 2010 and a son born in 2012, remained hospitalized Tuesday in stable condition. Roever was released from the hospital and booked into the Johnson County jail.

County court records show that Roever and her ex-husband were scheduled for a court hearing Tuesday as part of child custody case. The couple had filed numerous motions, most involving divorce proceedings, child custody and other domestic issues, since the case began in March 2015. They had filed another case beginning in 2011 and that case was dismissed in 2012.

After Tuesday's hearing was canceled, an attorney for Roever's ex-husband filed a request Tuesday for an emergency review hearing on the custody case.

"This motion is based on the fact that petitioner (Roever) has been arrested and booked on three counts of attempted capital murder with the children as victims," Attorney Randy McCalla wrote in the motion.

The ex-husband was given primary custody of the children after the couple divorced in 2016, The Kansas City Star reported .

The office of Roever's attorney, Sarah Carmody, said she was not accepting calls from reporters on Tuesday.